Ballots to remain uncounted in MI and Stein blocked in Philly. Guest: Election integrity, law expert Paul Lehto says this proves 'only option is to get it right on Election Night'. Also: Trump taps climate denier, fossil-fuel tool for EPA...

Aaron Goldstein is a punk. There is no such thing as "conservative intellectualism". There is no intellect in conservatism. You can quote me. lamps

Consider it done, Lamps.

Lamps also promises more on Election 2004 in the coming week via Huffington Post. We'll let you know when that happens.

And BRAD SHOW promises (presuming we can get over the technical problems that plagued us last week!) to air the entire Jim Lampley interview on this week's Saturday show! Hope you'll join us! (And feel free to help us defray the cost!)

Yes, Horkus - both those labels belong in the file called "Does Not Exist".

But, Horkus, I'd rather be at a dinner with a porn star than with Bush! In fact, I'd never want to be at a dinner with Bush, because I would probably would not be able to refrain from telling him plainly and loudly what a disgusting excuse for human being he is, just for starters...

I wonder if Mr. lampley has any observations on his former ABC collegue, Al Michaels and his pro neocon on-air blathering, like "Condi for NFL Commissioner"?

I know I never watch Monday Night Football anymore (and maybe Dennis "I used to be almost funny once" Miller took his cue from Al?) because of his pro-Bush bs, and I lost all respect for my childhood hero, John Madden, for going along with his shit.

Will you be going to go to the congressional hearing on the present media arranged by Rep John Conyers? Many bloggers will be there, and Randi Rhodes, Franken...
Looking forward to your blog on that, it's like being there, the way you describe things...

Peggy, I have nothing against porn stars. Only in America can a short, hairy, fuzzball like Ron Jeremy become a star. He's my hero.

But seriously, keep in mind that this is the same administration that hired John Ashcroft as attorney general. During the Clinton years, Janet Reno publicly stated that we had more important things to do than go after the porn industry. Before 9/11, John Ashcroft was hell bent on going after pornographers. Now Bush is ready to wine and dine with big time porn stars. It's confusing as it is interesting.

Neo-conservatism is intellectually based. Norman Podhoretz and Irving Kristol were the founders of the movement, I believe. But it's hardly clear that the current power elite use whatever intellect they have for the public good.

Domestically, the goal of the neo-cons is to dismantle every element of the New Deal, from Social Security to controls on Corporate America and Wall Street that followed the excesses of the 1920s. Getting rid of anti-trust regulations that protect small businesses is part of the scheme; the neo-cons would return us to the days of the money trusts around 1900, when Teddy Roosevelt's
"malefactors of great wealth," Rockefeller, Morgan, Carnegie, and Vanderbilt actually ran the economy in their self-interest.

Internationally, it's the use of raw power, subsumed into a Bible-based alliance between Crusaders and Zionists that will reform the Middle East according to a Western paradigm and bring its oil resources under the alliance's control

This is all very dangerous, but at least defensible from an intellectual perspective. What the Bush crowd has done is disguise its motives through Rovian political tricks and outright lies, while screwing up the implementation. Because the man at the top is the antithesis of an intellectual, and because he places loyalty over competence in choosing his subordinates, the whole process has been mismanaged.

You can't implement a neo-conservative intellectual revolution with a leader like Bush, who embodies the exact opposite characteristics. Theoretically, cowboys can be intellectuals...but not this cowboy. And you can't implement any political revolution if the public is lied to about its underlying motivations.

Robert: you provide an interesting read, as always. I rarely disagree with you, but I find myself shaking my head over most of your comment #7.

I don't believe that "getting rid of anti-trust regulations" --- which protect not only "small businesses" but also the public --- can be "defensible" from any perspective, intellectual or otherwise.

I don't think the attempt to use "raw power" to bring the Middle East's "oil resources under the alliance's control" is defensible either. At best it's armed robbery; but what's happening in Iraq is armed robbery plus mass murder plus environmental devastation. None of this is defensible except in the most warped and twisted minds.

I don't even buy the idea that Bush is out to "reform the Middle East according to a Western paradigm". I think this is a smoke screen. But it's clear that his administration is trying to reform the United States according to a police state paradigm. I find this thoroughly despicable and utterly indefensible.

As for the course of events in the Middle East, I agree that "the whole process has been mismanaged" but I don't think it could have been otherwise; as I see it "the whole process" is lunacy at best. Not to mention evil.

It's true that the neocon movement is intellectually based. It also fantasy based. They have put together a mish mosh of ideas from history that have no relevance to the present. All their techniques are mixed up in a ridiculous cookbook style.

Things probably changed permanently after the Depression and WW II, and they would like to equate their 911 stunt to those points in history but it won't work.

I agree that Bush was their big mistake. Thankfully.
They seem to sabotage themselves as they go.

While their actions are probably not defensible from any point of view, they are inevitable as this is basically the way mankind has operated so far. Conquest, murder, theft, and subjugation have been the game. It hasn't worked too well, though, as control is brief at best and induces paranoia waiting for the next conqueror.

Something seems terribly wrong about the neocons. Maybe they moved too fast getting the plans off the drawing board and into world empire. Something in the rhythm.

Gannon-Gate takes an interesting turn, Jeff Gannon had more than just executive access.

"It is clear from the first FOIA release, reported by ePluribus Media on Monday, that the difference between having a security clearance and using it can be quite large. From the Secret Service's earliest remaining appointment request --- on Dec. 20, 2004, until Jan. 26, 2005, when he asked "the question," --- the White House press office requested and received an appointment for Guckert every day

During that span, Guckert shows up on the Secret Service access control logs only six times. If examined without context, these records give the impression that Guckert was one of the pack when clearly he was not.

Despite repeatedly parroting the Bush administration's agenda as "news;" despite receiving a "stipend" from a dummy news agency co-founded by a "friend" of Karl Rove and the current Chairman of the Williamson County, Tex., Republican Party; despite being denied credentials as a journalist by a committee of journalists, Guckert had an open invitation to the briefing room as far back as the current records extend."

For Winter Patriot: I disagree with the neo-cons as vehemently as you do. I used the phrase
"defensible on an intellectual basis" to acknowledge that Podhoretz and Kristol, whose laissez-faire economic theories trace back to Adam Smith and John Stuart Mill, are themselves intellectuals.

Look at this way, please: Reagan believed government was the problem, not the solution to problems. Bush is Reagan's ideological legatee, but lacks his integrity, his political skill, and most of all his sense of self-esteem...that means Bush must surround himself with sycophants, because he lacks the intellect to defend his views alone.

Reagan was twice elected overwhelmingly (I voted for him twice, though I regret the second vote), because the Great Society/Vietnam exacta, combined with Jimmy Carter's mistakes, had created runaway inflation and a weakening of our world position (see Iran hostage crisis). If Reagan's presidency, badly flawed though it was, can be said to have legitimized the idea that "big government" can overreach (it can). then it's consistent to admit that neo-conservatism is intellectually defensible.

If I opened a can of worms by suggesting that certain neo-con beliefs are intellectually defensible, I'm sorry. Yes, it does depend on how we define the word "intellectual." For me, the word suggests a person who uses brain power to formulate ideas, and builds a philosophy around those ideas. Such a philosophy could offend, yet be based on reason.

I think some neo-conservatives fit that definition. I believe Norman Podhoretz and Irving Kristol did. But I think we all agree that putting a dimwitted
cowboy like Bush in charge of a neo-conservative movement multiplied its intrinsic weaknesses, which include a Darwinistic "survival of the fittest" mentality, a chasm between rich and poor, a need for military hegemony to enforce it, and its susceptibility to being coopted by religious interests.

Dredd #15 said: "What we need to keep focusing on is the wrongness of the neocon movement at the bottom line position."

Many (or most) of those who oppose the war have grown spiritually beyond those who wish for war (either based on fear of an imagined attack or for baser motives i.e. greed.)

I suggest that we (in our hive collective here) struggle against inhumane acts at home and abroad. We choose to see the human race as our family - no matter what religion (or not), race or gender. We Liberals aren't exclusionists, we allow for differences. Not so the neo-CONs, who are fear-based, xenophobic segregationists.

Who is this human race? How is it we can call ourselves spiritual & therefore above the animals? Compare human societies with animal societies and see which one is responsible for true malice, greed & rampant destruction. If we are spiritual --- we'd better do something quick to prove it.

Man is an exception, whatever else he is.
If it is not true that a divine being fell,
then we can only say that one of the animals
went entirely off its head.
G. K. CHESTERTON

The neo-CON faux christians are dancing with the devil and grinning ear to ear. The true message of the holy man Christ is totally forgotten or mangled by most evangelicals & born-agains. Remember, it was 100 years after Jesus was crucified that the organized religion Christianity was formed. I’m 100% positive Christ would not approve of what it has become in the hands of the current rabid fundamentalists.

Dredd said: "Whether or not the neocon movement is one way or the other we would all say it is off base, wrong headed, wrong hearted, and unjust." It is also --- Immoral.

HELL IS LONG SPOONS
In hell, people are seated at an abundant table of food, but they are starving because their spoons are so long they can't get any of the feast into their mouths. In heaven, people are seated around the same table with the same food and the same spoons, and they are blissfully feasting because they are all feeding each other.

There is a limit to how much we can do for others and for the world around us if we believe ourselves to be separate. But, if we truly recognize that we are all part of the same whole, then in helping someone else, we help ourselves, and in healing ourselves, we assist everyone.

(Keep in mind that the idea of Hell or Heaven as a place outside of oneself is in error. “The Kingdom of Heaven is within.” Therefore, I deduce that Hell is also within. Where do you wish to live? The choice is yours.)

To call “intellectual conservative” an oxymoron is not only offensive but a dangerous misreading of the opponent. I am NOT a conservative (for that matter Bush isn’t really either). I tend more to the left/libertarian region of political space. But anyone who thinks that intelligent, well read and thoughtful conservatives don’t exist, needs to do some hard thinking and reading themselves.

I know it is hard not to get angry when cryptofascism is on the march. But we will do the resistance no favors by name calling and pie throwing. To get the word out, wake the sleeping American giant (and keep our sanity) we must call a spade a spade. But let’s not call a broom a spade.

There are many incompetent unethical buffoons in the current Republican Leadership. (Thank god, if they were all competent, we’d really be in trouble.) But there are also some very crafty little buggers. Forget that fact and you will be sucker punched, again and again. (Just ask Dan Rather.)

Actually, I think the incompetence, arrogance, greed and ignorance of the right wing leadership is rudely shaking the giant awake as we speak. Now we must prepare for the backlash that WILL occur when they see their power slipping away. The Republican's misguided fight for the nuclear option can be seen as the beginning of that backlash.

Hi, JPentz #18 - For the first (and last time) I would like to hear what J. Falwell and his "religious" clan have to say about this! Doesn't Mary realize that Rove is not interested in Marys - only GGs. Good luck to her though. Hope she catches anything interesting on video tape.

Intellectual conservatives certainly exist. That's undeniable. William F. Buckley, Jr. is the epitome of an intellectual, but he's not a neo-con. Antonin Scalia, as much as I detest the man, is very intellectual. So is Paul Wolfowitz, and even Condi Rice fits that description, broadly (no pun intended).

Somehow an anti-intellectual dufus, George W. Bush, became the standard barrier for a movement with an intellectual foundation. This isn't the first time this has happened. U.S. Grant led the Republicans in the first Gilded Age, even though he knew little or nothing about laissez-faire economics.
Warren G. Harding was Grant redux, a likable but inept man who allowed others around him to use untapped oil reserves for their own benefit in the second Gilded Age (Teapot Dome...does it sound familiar?). Dwight D. Eisenhower suited the G.O.P. perfectly in the third Gilded Age, keeping silent about the military/industrial complex until he was about to leave office. Ronald Reagan, Bush's ideological progenitor, brought in the fourth Gilded Age in all its glory...deregulation of business, leveraged financial markets, and a blank check for military contractors.

The only Republican who ever stood up against all this was Teddy Roosevelt. He's dead now.

Not at all. Real conservatives don't believe in massive federal deficits. And they don't believe in unilateral attacks on sovereign countries, or wars based on pie-in-the-sky estimates of the real cost.

Neo-conservatives are different. Their ideology supersedes all other factors.

RLM #29
Under search with my magnifying glass I cannot uncover such a thing as a 'real conservative'. That item was just an illusion. Remember the "Balanced Budget Amendment"? Sure! And look how quick it was abandoned. The checks and the power drove it out.

'They' no longer needed it. The purpose was to limit spending on social needs and with trifecta power who needed it. 'They' had something better--spend spend spend. Spend the treasury into insolvancy. And big rewards to the super 1% at the same time. And the lied for war, a compassionate's dream come true.

For Cole: Under Reagan, Democrats were scorned as "tax and spend liberals." To the extent the criticism was warranted, "spend and tax" was nearer the truth, because many liberal Democrats did believe in welfare-state entitlements that had to be paid for with new taxes.

But the Republicans subsituted "borrow and spend" for "tax and spend." Similary, "spend and borrow" is more accurate. They spend on the military without compunction (Reagan called it "defense" spending, but it was essentially a blank check for military contractors), meanwhile cutting taxes and slashing social spending to partially compensate. But tax cuts combined with runaway military costs still result in massive deficits.

Dredd #26 said, "So we must remember that it is crazy radical extremist ideas that we are against ... and this is what puts us in agreement with conservatives on some issues."

I agree wholeheartedly with you on this, Dredd. Labels encourage bigotry - but we have them and I guess we have to live with them. I hope there's a huge fall-out from the extremist repub. party. And we need a strong leader to catch them.